“Miles,” he confessed, as he entered the sitting room, “there are some things I will never make fun of again. Have you a personal enemy here?”
“Not one,” replied Furley. “The soldiers, who are all decent fellows, the old farmer at the back, and your father and mother are the only people with whom I have the slightest acquaintance in these parts.”
“The bridge has been deliberately sawn through,” Julian announced gravely.
Furley nodded. He seemed prepared for the news.
“There is something doing in this section, then,” he muttered. “Julian, will you take my job on?”
“Like a bird,” was the prompt response. “Tell me exactly what to do?”
“Put on your sea boots, and your oilskins over your clothes,” he directed. “You will want your own stick, so take that revolver and an electric torch. You can’t get across the remains of the bridge, but about fifty yards down to the left, as you leave the door, the water’s only about a foot deep. Walk through it, scramble up the other side, and come back again along the edge of the dyke until you come to the place where one lands from the broken bridge. Is that clear?”
“After that, you go perfectly straight along a sort of cart track until you come to a gate. When you have passed through it, you must climb a bank on your lefthand side and walk along the top. It’s a beastly path, and there are dykes on either side of you.”
“Pooh!” Julian exclaimed. “You forget that I am a native of this part of the world.”
“You come to a sort of stile at the end of about three hundred yards,” Furley continued. “You get over that, and the bank breaks up into two. You keep to the left, and it leads you right down into the marsh. Turn seaward. It will be a nasty scramble, but there will only be about fifty yards of it. Then you get to a bit of rough ground--a bank of grass-grown sand. Below that there is the shingle and the sea. That is where you take up your post.”
“Can I use my torch,” Julian enquired, “and what am I to look out for?”
“Heaven knows,” replied Furley, “except that there’s a general suggestion of communications between some person on land and some person approaching from the sea. I don’t mind confessing that I’ve done this job, on and off, whenever I’ve been down here, for a couple of years, and I’ve never seen or heard a suspicious thing yet. We are never told a word in our instructions, either, or given any advice. However, what I should do would be to lie flat down on the top of that bank and listen. If you hear anything peculiar, then you must use your discretion about the torch. It’s a nasty job to make over to a pal, Julian, but I know you’re keen on anything that looks like an adventure.”